Almost Something
by holdencaulfi3ld
Summary: The Hunger Games in Cato's POV. Lots of back story, with some Cato/Clove later on. Rated T just to be safe. Some elements of Divergent will be used but no crossovers
1. Chapter 1

This is my first ever fic, so sorry for errors!

I'm planning on continuing the whole book through Cato's POV. I'll be mixing book and movie elements together.

Clove/Cato pairing in the future!

Constructive criticism is very much welcome!

**Disclaimer: I'm not Suzanne Collins and do not own The Hunger Games, unfortunately.**

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It's tough life training for the Games. Firstly, you have to give up most of your family life. Secondly, you have to give up most of your family.

When I was 6 years old Victors from my district started looking for my years tributes. They watched all the children at school, contemplating which ones will grow up to be the strongest and fastest. If you're on the play ground at recess climbing the monkey bars at full speed and pushing your classmates on the blacktop for not giving you their gum, watch out, because you could be next.

I didn't know this when I was 8, no one told me. I wish they would have because while all the other kids were huddled in a circle diverting their eyes from the past years Victors, I was digging holes in the ground and covering them with grass, a trap for one of the miserable kids that would step in its path. I thought I was strong, showing off, but doing these things ended up making me weak.

After a week of watching me at school, the two scouting victors, Thornia and Driff, approached me on my walk home. My little brother, Blaine, walked with me. He was 5 and rather skinny and needed thick glasses to see. He was picked on a lot by the other kids at our school, so my fists had a tendency to intervene with their mouths.

"Hey, Cato," I remember Thornia saying. She had long, black hair and a sharp, pointed nose. Her eyes were a deep blue. Since she had won the games only two years before she was still young, about 20.

"We've seen you on the playground, you're a pretty clever little guy," Driff said. Driff was also pretty young, probably early 20's, but in my memory I see him as being old and wise, like a father or a teacher. "You've watched The Hunger Games on the television before, huh?" I nodded. My family, like the rest of district 2, always made an event of the games. Bakers made treats with the tributes faces on them, people made bets and celebrated when the numbers got low. I remember huddling up against my father when I was very young, watching a girl from 2 slicing open an opponent's throat. We cheered.

"How would you like to be one of our tributes?" Driff asked. I knew how special that might make me, to be a tribute. Everyone loved and praised them like they were made of gold. My parents would be so proud of me, I thought.

"What would I have to do?"

"Well, you'd move to a new school, one that gets you ready for the arena. It'll make strong, so you can win," Thornia smiled. Move. I would have to move away from my family, from Blaine. He wouldn't have anyone to protect him. He'd grow up getting tossed around. No one would take him seriously and he'd get a meager job in the old mines. I couldn't have my brother pushed around the rest of his life.

"That's really nice of you lady, but I can't leave my brother all alone," is what I decided. Thornia and Driff's expressions' were flat. I could see something of fear in their eyes.

"Oh, well I'm really sorry, Cato." At the time I thought Thornia meant she was sorry I wouldn't be a victor with fortunes and fame, but a few weeks later I understood her apology.

I continued my normal life for a while, going to school and coming home, doing chores. Blaine and I played 'Kill the rebels' in our back yard. We watched this television show on Sunday mornings called 'Tom and Jerry' and on Thursday nights mom let us go down to the bakery and get cupcakes, some even had Thornia's face on the. I continually protected Blaine from the knuckleheads that teased him. I protected him from almost everything. Almost.

Nearly a month after my conversation with Driff and Thornia, Blaine and I were walking home from school when we stopped at this park close to our house to play on the swings and eat oranges our mom had packed us. I walked over to the garbage can to throw away our peels and when I turned around Blaine had vanished. Just like that, gone. I started screaming his name continuously and I ran around, searching under benches and in bushes. I told myself he was just playing a game, that I would find him, but it turned dark and I still hadn't found him. I returned home where my parents were waiting and told them what had happened, how I'd lost Blaine. They called the Peacekeepers and neighbors and we all searched for hours. We were about to call it quits for the night when someone screamed that they'd found him. But it wasn't him. Blaine was colorful and giggly, always smiling. But this, whatever it was, was not. It was pale with glassy eyes and felt limp. When I touched the hand it was ice cold. Red dripped around the head. Its neck had three, long lesions covering it. I heard some shout it was an animal, but the cuts were so long and deep I couldn't imagine what kind of animal could do something like that. My parents were took me away and I never saw Blaine again.

I remember my mother crying a lot the next few weeks. My dad was different, though. He barely did anything, just laid in bed and starred at the walls. When he stopped going to work my neighbors help feed us and lent us money to buy new clothes when winter came. Dad still wouldn't do anything.

One night, though, he got out of bed and came in my room. He put his old, tattered, wrist watch in my hand and kissed my forehead. I watched him walk out and turned off the lights, put the watch on my nightstand, and went to sleep with the ticking sticking in my ears.

In the middle of the night I woke to wailing come from the bathroom. My mother had woken up to use the toilet but had accidently walked into my father's dead body hanging from the ceiling fan.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: Still not Mrs. Collins, sigh. Also, the whole fear simulation is from 'Divergent' by Veronica Roth.**

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After Blaine and dad died I had no excuse not to join training as a tribute. My mom was extremely proud of me, of course, boasting like any mother from district 2 would.

The academy could hardly be compared to a school. It was a large building made entirely of cement with on only a few large windows spaced around. The first time I walked through the front door, my eyes burning from the bright lights and white walls, I pondered how anyone could live in the place. I soon found out that most of the rooms were downstairs, like they would be in the Capitol, I was told. The main floor was only offices and elevator stations. The next level down were all dormitories, down one more was the cafeteria. I realized this about the floor plans; every story down got wider and wider, the base of the building starting out small, around the size of a house. The dormitory level was 20 feet wider, then 20 feet wider after that, and over and over again until we reached the bottom floor, which fanned out to be 2 football fields. It was all an underground pyramid.

I shared a room with the boy of the class, Marl. I've heard about how district 1 and 4 train their tributes, and I've discovered that District 2 takes it more seriously. Instead of choosing one girl and one boy and training them until they're 18, District 2 chooses _two_ girls and _two_ boys to train. One year before their games they fight each other using all the strategies they've learned at the academy. The winner gets to volunteer at the reaping, while the other stays home and watches their fame pass them by. Losing the fight is a complete embarrassment and I've heard rumors that most people commit suicide after. I'm not sure if these are rumors to get us to work harder or are actually true. I can't say I've encountered many losers, though.

The transition from my normal school to the training academy was difficult. Changing any school would be difficult, but I assumed no average student had the trouble us tributes had. I went from coloring maps of Panem to running 10 miles before breakfast. At first, I fell behind everyone else on our runs, my 8 year old legs were short and I stumbled by. Of course all the kids my age had this problem, but I distinctly remember a girl in my year, Britten, keeping up with the 18 year olds.

I'll admit, I always was a friend to jealousy, and Britten definitely got us closer. I couldn't understand how she could go so fast and keep up. All of the victors who trained us praised her, including Driff and Thornia. I couldn't believe a _girl_ was beating me. I imagined her winning against the other girl, Clove, and me winning against Marl. I'd have to go into the games with her, be her ally. I knew if this came true all our mentors would prefer her, their favorite, to win. She would get all the gifts from our sponsors. She would lead the Career pack. She would kill me, win the games, and return home as victor. No one would remember the puny little Cato who got beat by a _girl_. I wouldn't let it happen.

It was around the time I had this revelation that we started introduction to combat. We started off easy at first, just throwing punches, but soon Driff let us throw in some swords.

Driff set me up against Britten because, as he explained, _I was going to have to get used to hurting little girls. _We were positioned on a square, cushioned mat with a red circling outlining the boundaries. Our swords were placed on the inner edge of the circle. I should say that we were both 11 by this time and had already had a few years of training down. The object of this duel was to some what harm your opponent, leaving them with just enough scrapes and bruises to yield.

I threw the first punch, knocking right into Britten's jaw. She stumbled a moment before making a fast turn to gain momentum and splitting her foot into my hip, throwing me onto the ground. I have to admit, it was a good hit for a girl. I grabbed for the sword behind me and sprang to my knees. Britten was on the other side of the mat with her weapon at her hands. She was fast, insanely so. She started barreling toward me with her sword pointed at my shoulder. Right as the tip nabbed my arm I pushed the sharp edge of my blade into her side just enough to open a cut. She screamed, released her weapon, and started to collapse backward; onto the side she had been struck. Before her body hit the cushion I threw my sword on the ground under her spine. Blood gushed and her cries were curdling. The mentors rushed to her side and helped her to the informatory.

No one blamed me—at least not to my face—for Britten's injuries. She was in a wheel chair for a long time, but I remember her starting to use crutches to walk a few years later. Britten would not be able to be a tribute with a severed spine. She wouldn't be able to kill me. I destroyed the threat she presented and in stowed a new one to Marl and Clove: Do. Not. Up. Cato.

When Britten left, the mentors decided that getting any other kid to train from the beginning would be too much work, so Clove had no competition for volunteering. I didn't find a huge threat in Clove. Our mentors had decided she would focus heavily on knife-throwing while I would train hard in strength. I've always felt this gave me an advantage in survival because strength was the key skill to almost everything—throwing, fighting, building, hunting, killing…

Although I thought she wasn't a threat to my victory in the games, I wasn't friends with her. I ate lunch with her and Marl, because we tended to stay away from the older tributes—they had a tendency of hurting the younger trainees to prove it didn't faze them—but that was about it. I wasn't at the academy to make friends.

When we were 14 the victors introduced a new training technique that attempted to obliterate all of our fears. We were the first year to try it out. Marl was the first to try it out. When he came back to our dormitory after the first run through, he looked horrible. Nauseous, scared, and sweating profusely. It was disgusting, really. He explained, through slight gasps of air, what it was. They called it a fear simulation. He said they put you in a small room and sat you in a chair, hooked you up to cords that connected to a computer, and injected some liquid into your neck. Then they started the simulation.

It was like reality, Marl had said. He was in field of grass with gray sky and he could feel the warmth of a setting sun and heard birds chirping above him. He leaned down and touched the grass, feeling it brush against his thin fingers. He smiled and wondered how this could be a fear, but then he heard the flick of fire behind his back. He turned quickly and was faced with a wall of fire so high he could no longer see the sky. Marl started running but the blaze was faster than he was and surrounded his skin. The pain was so intense and authentic that he cried out and fell to the ground, immobile. He screamed and cried until his lungs filled with smoke and he passed out. When he woke up he was in the chair in the tiny room with Thornia taking the cords off his body. I didn't understand the simulation at all, wasn't it supposed to remove fear, not produce it?

I was the next one to try out the simulation.

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**A/N:**** Thank you SO much for reading! Please, please, PLEASE review so I know people actually like it and I should keep writing. If you haven't read Divergent I definitely recommend you do! Please let me know any critics you have and any suggestions in how you want the story to go in. Next chapter will be about Cato's simulation experience. The reaping will also be coming soon! **


	3. Chapter 3

_Cato's first experience in the simulation. Enjoy! _

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After lunch the following day, Thornia took me into the simulation room. It was on the third floor, below the cafeteria, where testing rooms and offices were.

The room was just as Marl had told me, small and white with only a chair and computer standing in the middle. My eyes burned from the intensity of the bright lights. Thornia sat me in the chair and began telling me about the simulation.

"I'm just going to put these cords on your head and chest, and then the computer's going to do a scope of your memories, you won't feel anything. After it's done I'll start the simulation and you'll fall into an almost dream-like state. It's very important that you remember none of this is actually real, understand?" I nodded. Of course none of this is real, a bimbo could realize that. Thornia finished putting the cords on me and started the memory scope.

"The scope's going to try and find some unpleasant memories you have and use them in the simulation. The first time we do this will be the hardest because the fears are festering from your own mind. Anything that appears in the simulation will be things you've actually seen in your own life, or have thought of in your mind." That made me wonder how Marl had ever seen a wall of fire tumbling after him before. I knew he hadn't grown up around me but I was pretty sure district 2 wasn't the place to encounter fire balls. I remembered how Marl just let the fire eat him until the simulation ended.

"What makes the simulation stop?" I asked Thornia.

"Technically, you have to overcome whatever fear is being represented, but a slowing heart rate can bring you out too. The simulation is meant to conquer your fears so try your hardest to fight off your emotions, but if anything is too overwhelming, just calm yourself down and you'll wake up," Thornia said this all like she'd memorized some handbook, "The scope's done. I'm going to put you down now, okay?"

"Okay." With that, Thornia shoots a liquid into my neck, taps on the screen to the computer, and I drift away.

* * *

Seconds later I woke up in the same small, white room, but Thornia, along with the chair and computer, have vanished.

"Thornia?" I called. Something must be wrong, I thought. Why wasn't I put into a field like Marl? This white room couldn't have counted as a landscape, could it? "Hello?" I yelled.

I turned around in a circle to see the entire room and that's when I saw the skinny, little boy with curly blonde locks and thick glasses. He had a mischievous grin on his face, just like I'd remembered.

"Blaine?" I said, astonished. This was my fear? Blaine? How could I have possibly been _afraid _of Blaine? He stood there in the white room, smiling, and I starred at him for what seemed like hours. He looked just the way he had before…before…I realized then how un-real he was. He looked just how I remember him because it _was_ how I remembered him. It was my memory I was seeing in front of me, not Blaine.

But I didn't care. That was the closest thing I was going to get from having Blaine back, so I just stayed starring at him until that wasn't enough anymore.

"Hey, come here," I said as I walked toward him. Right when I had gotten close to him, though, he ran off in the opposite direction. "Hey! Wait!" I screamed after him, but he continued to run. I started my pace after him and learned that this wasn't the same room I had been in before. Yes, it was blindingly bright and white, but it was not small. It was endless. I raced after Blaine for a while, so long in fact, that I could no longer comprehend time. I suspected this was a symptom of the simulation.

Blaine stopped at the edge of a pond. When had that gotten there, I thought. When I halted in front of him I saw a beam of light hit the object Blaine'd been carrying. It was the wrist watch my father gave me before he killed himself.

"What are you doing with that?" I asked him. I recalled where I had left the watch, on the nightstand in my dormitory. It was the only possession I kept with me when I came to training. I went to grab it from Blaine's hand but before I could get a hold of it Blaine turned to the pond and dropped the watch and I watched as the water devoured it.

"No! Why did you do that?" I shouted as I dove my hand after the watch. My fist collided with the water making it impossible to reach the watch. I could see it resting at the bottom of the pond. I clattered my palms against the water but it remained solid. In the few seconds that the watch reached the water and my hands flew after it the water had frozen into ice.

"What's wrong with you? That was _dad's_," I reeled to Blaine. My heart pounded heavily. From the position I rested on my knees I starred at Blaine. Everything was very calm for a few moments. I heard a snarl come from my side.

I looked over and found stocky wolf next to Blaine and I. It growled, leaning back and showing off its sharp teeth. I remained still, keeping my eyes on the creature. It rumbled one last time before throwing itself toward me. I closed my eyes. _It's only a simulation, only a simulation_, I chanted to myself. I knew its teeth would be painful but the hurt would leave and I would wake up back in the room with Thornia. That's what I looked forward to while I waited for the feeling of the beast's teeth in my skin.

But it never came. I opened my eyes and saw the wolf on Blaine, ripping into his throat. Blaine said nothing, did nothing. His eyes remained opened, looking at me. As blood began to lap onto the white floors I hurled myself on the back of the wolf. I wrapped my hands around its neck, digging my nails far into its fur, but the beast was too strong and it threw to the side carelessly.

No matter how hard I tried telling myself that this wasn't real I couldn't grasp the thought that I was losing Blaine again. I couldn't let that happen, I thought, I won't. With all the strength I could gather I lunged for the wolf's feet, dragging them back, to falter his balance and bring his attention to me, but no matter what I did or how strong I pushed, the wolf would steady himself again and attack Blaine. I fought with the beast until Blaine's simulation body was nothing more than a blood stain.

Once the creature was finished with Blaine it retreated off into the white oblivion. I starred at the remains of simulation Blaine. I had lost him, again. I had the chance to save him and I failed. I lost my father, too, his watch that was now buried in ice somewhere in this white void. I failed my family not once but twice, and the second time hadn't even been in reality. My heart beats sped up.

With all the anger of what just happened I screamed. And I cried. I did them both together in gasps and shouts that made my muscles tense and my neck strain. I wished there were something I could throw or someone I could bash but only the whiteness crept around me. Why wasn't I out of this idiotic dream yet? I was sure the fear was over. Maybe it was because I was still moving around and my heart was speeding. I sat on the ground to control my breathing.

* * *

I woke up in the white room with Thornia peeling the cords from my forehead.

"How long was that?" I asked.

"About an hour," Thornia replied, "everything that happened in there was recorded on this chip," she opens a compartment on the computer and holds up a golden sliver, "some of the other mentors and I will be looking at it."

"No!" I shouted at her. I didn't want them looking at that, it seemed too private. Those were my thoughts and my family. Also, I didn't want them to see me as weak, what with the crying and all.

"Sorry, Cato, that's how it is. We know this was probably really hard for you guys, we aren't judging you. We just want to keep track of your fears and progress." They would absolutely be judging me.

As I walked into the elevator to go to my dorm the girl from my year, Clove, stepped out. She looked me straight in the eyes and I realized how scared and nervous I must have looked. I tried putting on a tough demeanor but it seemed impossible with everything that was going through my mind. I turned and pressed the bottom for floor 1 I saw her turn into the hallway I had just come from. She was going in for her simulation test. I felt a pain for her because I knew what was about to happen to her wasn't going to be pleasant. I caught sight of her black hair just as the door closed.

Back in my own room I grabbed my father's watch from my nightstand and sat on my bed, turning the watch back and forth in my hands. I didn't see how this simulation was going to help me win the games. It wasn't like my father was going to jump out of the cornucopia with a crossbow. Still I knew I had to master it just like all the other skills I picked up there. The next time I would go in the test I would kick some serious fear ass.

The chance came soon because the next day Marl, Clove, and I were asked to do a simulation together.

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**A/N: Thanks for reading! Sorry for the delay but school was crazy this week. Not sure if I totally liked this but it'll do. Please, please, PLEASE review so I know people are reading! The next chapter will be more experiences in the simulation and training, then the reaping will be coming up! **


	4. Chapter 4

_Enjoy :)_

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Together Marl, Clove, and I walked into the simulation room. It still contained the one computer but two new chairs were placed beside the old one.

"Alright, you guys have all gone through this now, I'm not going to explain everything all over again," Thornia said as she walked into the white room. "Marl," she gesture to him to sit on the first chair. As Thornia hooked Marl up to the computer I peered at Clove. She was short, much shorter than me, but she was lean with muscle from years of training. Her black hair ended in a straight line at her shoulders and her face was very stern, the way I remembered it always being.

"Cato," Thornia said. I rested myself into the chair and Thornia put the cords all around my body, shot the liquid into my neck, and then did the same to Clove.

"Keep in mind that you're supposed to be working together, so no killing each other off. Ready?" Thornia asked. None of us responded so she plunged her finger on the computer and I drift away.

* * *

I aroused a few seconds later in a wood covered in a mount of white puff. With a quick swish of my foot I could tell it was cold. The trees all around us were covered in the stuff and the way the artificial sun bounced off all of it reminded me of the simulation room and then my last simulation. I shuddered and hoped the others thought it was from the temperature.

"I've never seen snow before," Clove said in bewilderment. Snow, of course that's what it was called. I'd only ever seen it in text books and other showings of the games I'd studied.

"I have," replied Marl shallowly. There's no, I thought, he could have seen snow; district 2 never got snow, not that I could remember. As I opened my mouth to proclaim him a liar I heard a buzzing from where Marl was standing. He had leaned into one of the nearby trees and in the process hit his elbow on a low hanging nest. In seconds we were swarmed by tracker jackers, their needle like bodies aiming for our exposed skin.

"RUN!" I yelled to Clove, Marl was too close to the nest to try and get away. Clove and I ran in the opposite direction seeking no real destination. Although Clove started with a lead I passed her in seconds. I looked back to see if there was any hope in Marl catching up but all I could make out was a horde of tracker jackers surrounding his carcass. "Keep going!" I screamed to Clove.

Our feet thudded into the snow and water came up to slap my cheeks. We ran for a good mile before Clove pushed ahead of my, grabbing my hand, and pulling me behind a thick oak tree.

"The tracker jackers are still coming but we have a lead," Clove said as she looked around the trunk. "What happened to Marl?"

"I-I think he's dead. Well, simulation wise," I stuttered as I recalled his lifeless body. Clove just shakes her head. "So what should our plan be?" _I _had my own plan—keep running—but the idea of the simulation was to work together so I thought I show the mentors I could be a good ally.

"I think we should just calm down and slow our heart rates so we can get out of here," Clove said matter-of-factly. I admitted to myself it was probably a better plan than mine—hers was definite while mine had many unsure outcomes.

"Okay," I told her as we both sat down in the wet snow. Clove closed her eyes and I followed in suit. _Breathe_, I kept telling myself. _In and out. In and out. _Everything was calm and I felt an arm shake my side so I thought I must have been back in the simulation room. When I opened my eyes I realized I was very much wrong.

Clove was standing next to me and pointing at the cloud of tracker jackers hurdling toward us.

"What do we do?" she shrieked.

"Uhh…they hate water right?"

"Yes, but I don't exactly see an ocean around the bend, Cato!" Clove flared with anger.

"Oh, shut up! I know what we can do," I pull a lighter out of my back pocket where I knew it would be. "Grab the candle starter by the tree," I instructed Clove. Confusion donned her face but she did what I told her to. As I started running my lighter on the snow around me I heard Clove screaming and I whipped around. Tracker jackers had started on her, enveloping her body. I ran to her standing form and slammed against it, both of us falling backward. I raised my lit lighter around us and tracker jackers started backing away.

"Throw snow on yourself!" I yelled at Clove. She did what I said and before long her and I were covered sitting in a shallow puddle holding fire in our hands. I looked over to see sweating covering her face and lumps forming on all around.

"'I'm dying," she whispered slowly to me as she laid down.

"No you aren't, this isn't real Clove. This may feel real but this is a simulation, you'll wake up in the room with Thornia," I told her. Clove's lips parted slightly and her breathes became heavy pants.

"It _hurts_," she choked out.

"J-just relax. The tracker jackers are gone. Control your heart rate and you'll leave this place."

"What if I don't?" tears ran out of her eyes, "what if you die in the simulation _and_ in real life? What if I don't wake up?" Clove's sobbed and grabbed onto my hand, holding tightly. "Don't let me die."

"I'm not," I said. This was ridiculous, really. How could she think she was actually going to die? I wanted to slap her and tell her to control herself, but the mentors wouldn't have liked that. "Focus on your breathing."

Clove breathed deep through her nose and said, "Do you smell roses?" I inhaled heavily.

"And blood," I told her. Her eyes shut and her body disappeared from under me. I wasn't sure if she died or had calmed down enough to leave, although the death seemed more likely. I breathed quietly then coasted off.

* * *

When I came back into the room, Marl was gone and Clove was sitting on her chair shaking. Thornia was kneeled down beside her trying to calm her down.

"I died," she murmured lifelessly. Thornia tried reassuring her with 'shhhs' and 'everything's fine' but Clove stayed paralyzed until she looked up into my eyes, "You let me die," she said before turning back and starring at the tiles in the floor. I stood there for a moment, unable to stay anything. I hadn't _let_ her die, she was dying and there was nothing I could have done. And she hadn't_ actually _died, she was perfectly unharmed! I walked out of the room not feeling anger but pity on the stupid girl who thought it was my fault she had _fake_ died.

I stormed into the hallway, around the corner, and into the elevator, punching the dormitory floor. I couldn't believe _she_ was going to be my ally in the arena. She'd get us killed in the blood bath for sure.

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A/N: Thank you so much for reading! This was shorter than the other chapters, let me know if you like longer or shorter chapters? Also, sorry for the delay, I was reading Insurgent all last week! Please, please, please review, it means so much!


	5. Chapter 5

I walked into the dorm Marl and I shared.

"Congratulations on dying in the first minute you idiot," I told him. I wanted him to know I was his superior and that I was absolutely going to be the one in the arena. Also, Clove's moronic thinking had set my mood on edge.

"Just shut the fuck up man, okay? Talking trash to me isn't going to make a victor." While he did have a point I kept on talking.

"Right, and what were you doing in the simulation? 'I've seen snow before!' The hell you have, district 2 hasn't gotten snow since the first rebellion. What were you doing? The mentors are going to think you 're psychopath," I spat at him. Marl got up from the bed he had been sprawled across and came over to face me, standing. The glow from the lights illuminated his green eyes and furrowed dark brows.

"You think I would just make up a stupid lie like that?" Marl said with pure curiosity in his tone. "Of course district 2 hasn't gotten snow since forever. I'm not from district 2, Cato. I've seen actual snow."

"What? You're not from district 2?" Obviously, he _was_ a psychopath. You can't move district, you can't visit district. This wasn't the golden age when people took vacations to the beach.

"Ugh, district 2 bought me. I'm from 7, Thornia and Driff scouted me out at school when I was beating on some kid and paid my parents a ton of money for me." From the way Marl said it all you hear he wasn't proud of it. He didn't care you could boast about being such a great fighter that he got to move districts. That lucky sonvabitch.

"You got to move districts? And you're moping about it?

"Moping? Are you serious? My family _sold_ me, I was forced into this prison and maybe into an arena where I'm going to die. And if that doesn't happen I'll be shunned from a district I'm not even supposed to be in. My life after training is over, Cato. There aren't any good outcomes for me." I could hear the pain Marl felt from his abandonment and the pure intensity of the way he just wanted me to understand how different our situations here were. I understood. I got that he even if he did win the games all he would really win was his life because the fame didn't matter when he was in district 2, completely alone. For me it was the opposite because I really didn't care about my life if I couldn't have the fame that went with winning. I saw Marl shoulders loosen as I took my time thinking all of this through.

I said, "I'm sorry," to him. Seriously. I said that. Rule number one of becoming a victor was to show no sympathy for your enemies and that's exactly what I. I changed my attitude toward Marl after that. I didn't see him as much of a threat anymore because he didn't care about winning or losing or the games entirely. He just wanted to train because it was the only thing in life he could and it was the only thing he had. I became friends with him. Not friends as in the tell each other our every secret and watch movies on Saturday nights friends, but the we ate lunch together and joke wrestled and made fun of the other tributes together friends. It's easy enough for me to say that, besides Blaine, Marl was my only friend in this life. This made beating him in the fight to decide tribute volunteer even more difficult than it should have been.

The fight was always a little more than a year before our games and Marl and I were both 17. It happened on the same mat that I ruined Britten's life on but this time we were each allowed to pick which one weapon we wanted to use. We both chose knives, which seemed to excite Clove a little too much. I remember Marl shaking my hand before we stepped on the mat and saying, "May the odds be ever in Clove's favor, because, my Lord, she needs it." I laughed, I know, but it was half-hearted because my nerves were so shot. I had had a plan for this fight in my head since I became Marl's friend and now that it was time to follow through with it I wasn't so sure I wanted to.

I stepped on to the mat. I imagined my family—my whole family, mom, dad and Blaine—standing on the sides cheering me on and being so proud of their son and brother. Marl stepped on. I imagined no one by his side. Thornia yelled out, "One!" I envisioned Marl winning the games, coming back to district 2 and sitting in the victors village with his money and wasting away in his big home all alone. "Two!" I saw Marl losing this fight, walking off this mat a loser and packing his bags, living on the streets as a beggar because he had no home. "Three!" Lastly, I saw the only person I can easily admit to being my friend. I saw him in our dorm laughing with me about the joke of the fisherman's mistress, him bending over and slapping his knee and then returning a glance in my direction with a smile so wide it looked like a slice of watermelon. "Begin!"

I wished so deeply that I had never met Marl, that his family never sold him, that he were born a year older or a year younger, that just some how things didn't add up this way. But they did. And I had a plan to follow through on.

I let Marl take the first step in and the second he did I grabbed his ankle and slammed him to the ground. He retaliated and turned me on to my side and hovered over me for a moment and I could see him debate his next move. He didn't need another move, though, because in that second it took him to ponder his doing I had already finished my job. I grabbed the hand knife from my side and jammed it into Marl's heart with so much force that when his body fell onto mine the handle on the knife left a massive bruise on my chest. I flipped him over and stood up, leaving my weapon in him. It was so quiet in that room. Everyone stared at me and I stared back, panting like a dog. Everyone's faces were so fearful and I felt so…sad, I guess is the word. No one went to Marl because it was clear to everyone in the room that he was good and dead. I backed away from the scene and left the room, trying to wipe the blood on my hands onto my shirt before I pushed the door open.

I went to Marl and—I went to my dorm and lay on my bed for hours. No one disturbed me the entire night. I thought about a lot of things that night, but mostly I thought about how I done my friend good.

That sounds stupid and crazy but it's not. I am 100% positive I did the right thing by Marl and I will continue to think that until the day I die. I saved him. I saved him from being alone and miserable. His life was spent in training where he was happiest and where he had no regrets. I killed him so fast he didn't have time to think of himself as a failure, I'm sure of that. In my head Marl is still alive and his is living out our memories together for an eternity. And he is happy.

And do not regret a thing.

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**A/N: This is so long over due, and I am very sorry. But I hope you enjoyed it! I will be writing more, but I don't have a schedule, so please keep checking back :) Also, reviews are still warmly welcome!**


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